Roger Avary

A tale of intrigue and murder at an English country estate, a sprawling, action-filled adaptation of a beloved fantasy novel and an exploration into the dark world of mental illness were among the screenplays the Writers Guild of America nominated Thursday as the best of 2001, setting up one of the toughest races to handicap in this hotly contested Oscar season.

With its aura of faux humility, dense saturation of "for your consideration" ads and humble-yet-effusive nominee posturing, awards season can be a long (if gala-packed and celebrity-studded) slog for Hollywood watchers. So it comes as a blast of fresh air when a front-runner allows himself to get into the competitive spirit. Cut to writer-director Quentin Tarantino mulling the Oscar possibilities for his spaghetti western-cum-World War II thriller "Inglourious Basterds." So far, the film has taken in more than $300 million worldwide, landed 10 Critics Choice Movie Awards nominations (as well as a Directors Guild of America nod for Tarantino)

In the somewhat rarified world of fan-geek worship, writer-director Don Coscarelli and actor Bruce Campbell are superstars. They became cult heroes more than 20 years ago, when Coscarelli wrote and directed "Phantasm" (1979) and Campbell starred in Sam "Spider-Man" Raimi's shoestring debut "The Evil Dead" (1982). Now in their mid-40s, they still enjoy untarnished credibility with a hard-core fan base that seems to get younger every year.

IS "Crash" the worst movie ever to win the Oscar for best picture? Probably not, though it definitely reeks. Academy members had a chance to make history by honoring "Brokeback Mountain," a trailblazing gay love story that also happened to be the best movie of 2005. Instead, they voted for arguably the worst of the five films nominated -- a ham-fisted expose of racial tensions in Los Angeles that pulled its punches by ending on an incongruous note of communion and redemption.

January 23, 2005 | David Freeman, David Freeman is a screenwriter and the author most recently of the novel "It's All True," which was named one of the best books of 2004 by Book Review.

There have always been directors who have been able to push personal movies through Hollywood. Typically, someone would make an interesting small movie that got some attention. The studios would then hire him -- or, in recent years, her. Often the studios were confused by the results. Orson Welles, who came from the theater and radio, made "Citizen Kane" for RKO, which didn't know what to do with it.

It began as a pagan poem told around shadowy campfires about a hero fighting the monster Grendel, the monster's mother and a dragon. Christendom's world of saints and sinners reinvented Beowulf as a soldier of God and branded Grendel one of Cain's evil kin. "Lord of the Rings" author and Old English scholar J.R.R. Tolkien reintroduced the story to the modern world in 1936 as an important work of literary art rather than an obscure artifact of Old English language.

While audience response to "Showgirls" may have fallen short of its studio's hopes, its opening-weekend box-office success likely will pave the way for more NC-17 films, industry watchers say. "I think that big studios are going to be much more open to it," said John Burnham, senior vice-president and co-head of the motion picture department at William Morris Agency. "Studios will be interested in anything that has that kind of ability to open so successfully. . . .

One is a former seminary student who said that when he first learned Mel Gibson was interested in his screenplay "Braveheart," he didn't tell his wife where he was meeting the actor for fear she would show up and gawk "like Lucy and Ethel." The other is a veteran British actress who became one of the year's most honored film writers after adapting the Jane Austen novel "Sense and Sensibility" into a screenplay.

Angelina Jolie's lips look even fuller than usual. She's emerging naked from a pool of dank cave water, rivulets of gold streaming gently down her body. "Giiiif meee sonnnn," she coos, in an Old English accent. Her flaxen hair is braided down her back in a long tail that slowly undulates and slaps the dark pool around her. She continues to purr enticements about making babies as a virtual camera circles 360 degrees panning around her long limbs and waist.

Roger Avary, the 37-year-old director of the upcoming film "The Rules of Attraction," has spent a lot of time in the editing room lately, thanks to the Motion Picture Assn. of America ratings board. Avary, best known as the co-writer of "Pulp Fiction," has submitted his film four times to the board. Each time it has come back rated NC-17--the kiss of death for a major release.